Millions of us have suffered a huge drop in our living standards as the bankers, bosses and Tories have made us pay for their crisis. Jeremy Dewar explains why we need to go beyond one-day protests if we want to stop the government’s attacks Over the past five years workers across Britain have witnessed their […]

By Dave Stockton and Marcus Halaby The world was astonished on 10 June, when just a thousand or so fighters from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (“Greater Syria” or “The Levant”), took Iraq’s second city Mosul with barely a shot being fired. Two Iraqi army divisions comprising nearly 30,000 soldiers fled, stripping […]

By Bernie McAdam After their humiliation in the EU elections at the hands of UKIP the Tories had to do something to reclaim the mantle of Britain’s number one racist party. The answer was to stir up Islamophobia by attacking Birmingham schools whose catchment area has a large Muslim population. In March an anonymous letter was […]

Thirty years ago in the Yorkshire coalfield, thousands of striking miners and their supporters faced an army of riot police intent on smashing the union and demoralising the pickets. Chris Clough looks back on and asks if the battle could have been won By May 1984, the miners, in their tens of thousands, had been […]

Joy Macready reports on the scandal at the heart of Britain’s privatised immigration system and yet another tale of abuse by Serco staff. Time to call for the shutting down of all deportation centres After numerous complaints, a hunger strike by 80 inmates, CCTV evidence and even a prison pregnancy, the truth about widespread sexual […]

It is estimated that over 3 billion people will watch at least some of the World Cup live on TV this summer, but how many will see the depth of poverty in the host country, Brazil, asks Rico Rodrigues The remaining months of 2014 will be very important politically for Brazil. The World Cup begins […]

The victory of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent elections threatens a rise in ethnic conflict writes Bernie McAdam. The Communist Parties were punished for their willingness to join bourgeois parties in government and their attacks on peasant farmers, but now the working class must defend itself against Modi’s coming neoliberal attacks […]

                    The Summer 2014 issue of Workers Power is out now Click here to read online (pdf) or select an article from the links below The main enemy is at home Solidarity with Antifascists in Ukraine campaign founded Racist and sexual abuse rife at Yarl’s Wood […]

By KD Tait The announcement of the substantial reinforcement of Nato forces in Eastern Europe signals the end of the “phoney peace” that followed the collapse of the USSR. The conflict in Ukraine, which saw the pro-Russian president Yanukovych overthrown by Western-backed ultra-nationalists and fascists has been the catalyst for a sharp escalation in tension […]

By Jeremy Dewar Like many further education establishments, Lambeth College is facing devastating cuts. Unlike most, however, its workforce has come out fighting – in an all-out indefinite strike. Teachers in the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) have been on strike since 3 June, demanding the withdrawal of new contracts which will, with no extra […]

By Rebecca Anderson AFTER MONTHS of media hype about UKIP and a national debate focusing on Europe and immigration, the right-wing party came top of the polls in May’s European Elections. It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that UKIP did so well, but there are diverging opinions about what this means for the […]

By Markus Lehner Spain bucked the rightward trend in May’s European Parliament elections by electing five MEPs from the new “Podemos” (We Can) formation. With 8 per cent or 1.25 million votes, in addition to the 11 per cent won by the United Left (IU) bloc, Podemos’s surprise success opens up the possibility of creating […]

The election of the Egyptian General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi should have provoked international outrage. Marcus Halaby explains why the great powers are engaged in a conspiracy of silence Russian imperialism and its Western rivals may be at loggerheads over Ukraine, but in Egypt they seem to have established a silent consensus, in favour of the […]

By KD Tait Elections, where half the population did not vote, a military invasion of large parts of the east and south of the country, murderous attacks by fascist militia, threatened and actual intervention by rival imperialist blocs and an impending economic disaster imposed by finance capital have all failed to quell the resistance to […]

 By Dave Stockton The western media are filled with talk of the danger or the onset a new Cold War. The villain of the piece, they all agree, is Vladimir Putin – a new Hitler. Hillary Clinton, Prince Charles and even German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble are of one mind on this. Of course there […]

        Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine 7:30 pm Monday 2 June SOAS (Vernon Square campus) Map Please join us for a launch meeting for a new campaign in the UK against Western backing for the far right regime in Kiev and in solidarity with those resisting fascist repression in Ukraine. […]

By Dave Stockton One of the most striking features of the events in Ukraine, both before and after the February coup, was the disgraceful response of some groups on the British and international left, including Socialist Resistance (British section of the Fourth International). First they denied the fundamentally reactionary nature of the Maidan movement. Then, […]

By KD Tait On 2 May the government in organised a pogrom against anti-government protesters, in which official figures admit that at least 46 people were killed, more than 200 were injured and 78 people hospitalised. Forces within the government orchestrated the massacre, bringing in a thousand Right Sector fascists from Kyiv and Kharkov to […]

By Bernie McAdam The arrest and subsequent release of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams stand as another monument to the iniquities of British justice in Ireland. Indeed it is ironic how one of the main architects of the peace process has potentially become a victim of its unravelling. In 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement […]

This is a statement drafted by Workers Power which we invite organisations and individuals to sign. Please circulate it to your members and supporters. To add your name to the statement please reply to this or email [email protected] May 3 2014 We unequivocally condemn the fascist pogrom in Odessa, carried out by Right Sector gangs […]

By Richard Brenner 1 May 2014 In the course of the argument over Ukraine, Workers Power has been accused of being soft on Russia or even supporting Russian imperialism. This is absolutely not the case. We opposed Russia’s war in Chechnya; we oppose Russian imperialism’s backing for the Assad regime in Syria. We supported the […]

Published by the International Secretariat, League for the Fifth International The crisis in Eastern Ukraine has a very different character from the myth presented in the “western” media. Here, there are relentless reports that it is the Russian army and Russian tanks that are about to “invade” Ukraine and violate its right to self-determination. In […]

By Franz Ickstatt, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, German section of the League for a Fifth International In the German media, the protest movement in the south and east of Ukraine is presented only as disturbances manipulated by Moscow as an excuse for the Russian aggressor to put more pressure on the struggle for an independent Ukraine and […]

By KD Tait The crisis in Ukraine has divided the international left and produced the deepest international crisis in Europe in 15 years. We argue that the conflict and our response must be situated in the context of a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry. The capitalist crisis, which began in 2007-08, has developed into a […]

By KD Tait An austerity package, for the “prevention of financial catastrophe”, passed by the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on March 29, threatens to deliver the people of Ukraine firmly into the grip of western imperialism. The bill, passed by a parliament purged of former President Yanukovych’s supporters, confirms that the decisive question characterising […]

By Kady Tait On 16 March, the population of Crimea voted overwhelmingly for federation with Russia. The results of the referendum were immediately rejected by all the major western imperialist powers, which have now barred Russia from G8 meetings and applied sanctions to figures in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage. In response to manoeuvres by […]

By Dave Stockton The tectonic plates of the world order, established after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, are shifting again, producing the political equivalents of earthquakes and tsunamis. Across the globe there are threats of economic sanctions between major powers which our rulers admit could make a train crash of the fragile economic […]

By Marcus Halaby A strike wave has forced the resignation of Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi and his cabinet, only a month after the military junta of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi rigged a constitutional referendum to enshrine its rule. More than 20,000 workers at state-owned textile factories in Mahalla El-Kubra struck in February, demanding the […]

“We’re trying to get the women together from the community and involved in the strike."